Piping plovers nest above the high tide line on bare sand, gravel or shell. The scrape is a depression only a few centimetres deep, and the eggs are pale and finely speckled, matching the substrate closely. Against gulls, crows and foxes this works well; the difficulty is that it works equally well against beachgoers, vehicles and dogs.
Adults use distraction rather than defence. A parent will run from the nest and perform a broken-wing display, dragging a wing along the sand to draw a predator away, then fly off once the threat has followed far enough. Chicks are precocial, leaving the nest within hours of hatching and feeding themselves, so the vulnerable window on the nest is short but total.
Management therefore consists mostly of exclusion: wire cages over nests that admit the plover but not predators, seasonal beach closures and vehicle restrictions. The recurring public misunderstanding is that closures target a bird that could simply nest elsewhere. It cannot; the species requires open sand with no vegetation, which is the same surface people use.